X-Men ‘97 brings X-Men 275 to life, and it does it in Episode 6, “Lifedeath, Part 2.”
On the heels of last week’s episode, I know we’ve all just been emotional wrecks. Hopefully the trauma healed for you. If it hasn’t, the comment section on the video is where we have that conversation, because I tell you what, I feel your pain.
This week’s episode is a filler episode, and I mean, what else are you going to expect? You’re going to have one, especially on the heels of something as dynamic and powerful as last week. The one thing I’ve noticed is we’re weaving several storylines together, and I’m okay with that. You have to remember how the comic books work. You never get a third act. Everything’s always a second act, which means you’re literally always going from one extreme to the next.
The Cover This Episode Rebuilds
The episode recreates the cover of X-Men 275. In that story the X-Men get absconded with by the Shi’ar Empire’s people, because Deathbird challenges her sister, so they literally go and get the X-Men to help. And because there were no other outfits or choices, they put them all in the blue outfits, which is really funny, because you get to see Wolverine in the yellow and blue. The classic yellow and blue, not his yellow and blue.
Then there’s the handsome stud on that cover. In the comics, at first you’re asking who is this guy, who is this guy, who is this guy, and you finally find out it’s Professor X. That’s the outfit you saw in this episode, and it looks amazing on him.
What I really thought was interesting is that this whole episode, in essence, is what was happening while. While things are going on in Genosha and all of last week’s episode, there’s a whole other, well, universe, frankly, of things happening.
Who Is the Adversary?
On the Storm side, Ororo and Forge continue to face down the Adversary.
The Adversary is a malevolent force of nature. Some people say it’s another version of the Shadow King. One thing Marvel has always done is take certain aspects of the universe, whether it’s fear, or death, or this darkness that’s in all of us, and treat them as all part of the same thing, so you may see different shards of it. One is the actual Shadow King proper. Another one is the Adversary. Take all of that as you will.
Storm is doing her best to help Forge. He was bitten by the Adversary, so he’s got this festering wound on his shoulder, and they’re trapped in the house. Forge manages to use his mother’s shaman book of magic, and he casts a spell banishing the Adversary. So there’s only one thing to do, and there’s a special root, as there always is in these stories, and it grows in a deep, dark place.
Storm has a known fear of enclosed areas. She has to face so many things. While she’s down in that dark place, the Adversary tries to come at her again, and you find out Forge’s machine worked. It was her own mind that was keeping her from fully realizing her powers again.
Let Them Thunder
“Let them thunder, for I am lightning.”
We get the fullness of classic Storm. She erupts, explodes out of the mountaintop, and you get to see her ride the wind, and she’s riding alongside horses, and it’s just this freedom. They got the root, she helped Forge, and she’s in her classic outfit, her X-Men number one outfit from back in the day in the comics. It looks beautiful. She looks beautiful. She’s wearing the crown, as she should, as all goddesses should.
It’s one of those moments where I was really happy to see Storm back to normal. Well, back to her whole self. That’s what the Adversary was using against her, this idea she’d toyed with: you are betraying yourself, ergo you don’t get powers, you don’t deserve your mutant abilities.
It’s a wonderful storyline. And then it ends with them turning the news on, because now they have time, and they see the news about Genosha. It butts right up into the thing.
Meanwhile, Across the Stars
This is actually where the episode started, with that clip that was dropped last week of Deathbird and the Imperial Guard.
For those of you playing at home, the Imperial Guard are the Shi’ar version of the X-Men. Yes and no. They’re all mutants. Mutants in the Shi’ar are a second class caste, yes, but they’re seen as lowly more than they’re shunned. And their Superman is Gladiator, and he’s amazing. Gladiator is literally the Imperial version of Superman. He’s got heat vision, he does the breath thing, he’s a powerhouse. The guy is a beast.
I’m not keen on the voice actor they got to play Gladiator. You have Kevin Conroy, who epitomizes the Batman voice, and you have Wolverine from the X-Men animated series, who is the paragon of what a character should sound like. That’s still the voice I hear when I read X-Men comic books. Then you have Gladiator’s voice, and I’m not too keen on it. That’s just me though.
In the middle of the conquering, it’s specifically the Kree, and we get to see Ronan the Accuser, which had me going, “Okay, good stuff, man.” A lot of Jack Kirbyisms flying around this episode. But more important than that, I really love the representation of Deathbird, and how the Shi’ar look, and the Imperial Guard.
A New Emperor, and the Voice Problem
Then the announcement comes out. “Your Empress is to be married and our empire shall welcome a new emperor. Professor Charles Xavier.”
I do love the fact that it’s the same voice actor who plays Morph. He’s doing his best to do an impression of the old voice actor who played Professor X, and he’s doing a wonderful job. He really is. Would it be my first choice? No, and the problem is they had Morph do a spoof of Professor X, and now that’s all I can hear. “While I trusted all my students would gladly die for my dream of a better future, I would prefer it be avoided.”
Oh, I don’t know, man. It was just too good. I know why you did it. The problem is it’s difficult to play that off in animation, when all you’re going by is the voices.
Deathbird’s Challenge
Immediately you get the impression that the Shi’ar do not like the idea of an outsider marrying their queen. And Deathbird, who really wants her sister’s throne, uses this as an opportunity to undermine her and demands a special Shi’ar thing. It’s sort of a right of challenge.
The way this works in the Shi’ar is the challenger gets to issue any kind of challenge they want. I challenge you to a game of pinochle. I challenge you to streak at the Super Bowl. I challenge you to anything you can think of. Sometimes it’s chance, or skill, or strength. Sometimes it’s just you’ve got to go do a thing because I said so, because that’s the challenge I’ve put forth.
She says he has to allow Lilandra to wipe his mind of all memories of Earth.
Which is not unfounded, considering Charles was literally trying to talk Lilandra into changing her throne world to Earth, or at least his quarter of the galaxy, so he could be home with his X-Men. He’s always at the threshold of doing it, until the council asks him, “Will you denounce your X-Men?” And he can’t bring himself to do it.
Class Is Now in Session
So Deathbird rocks in, it’s all these voices, and next thing you know Charles pulls them into the mindscape, the astral plane. And he says, “Class is now in session.”
Bro! He’s so schooling fools. And he tries to explain some stuff to them.
That’s when he has what I call his Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope moment. Alderaan is destroyed, and all of a sudden Obi-Wan says it’s as if a thousand voices all called out and screamed and were then silenced. Same thing. Professor X, in the middle of talking, in the middle of showing off, gets hit with the psychic wave of all the mutants that died in Genosha. He sees this giant interpretation of Gambit, and he just knows.
He comes back and tells her he has to go back to Earth. She tells him what it means with her sister if he leaves. And he says you don’t understand, I can’t abandon them, it’s too much, I can’t leave them like this. He wants to go back because of what happened.
That’s really where this episode ends. It intertwined the two plots, A and B, but I wanted to get the first one out and then the second one.
There you go. Now you know. And if knowing is half the battle, you’re halfway to being a know-it-all yourself.
The Verdict
X-Men ‘97 Episode 6, “Lifedeath, Part 2,” is a 7.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
It wasn’t bad. It’s a good episode. It’s a filler episode. It’s a connective episode. It’s a while you were there, here’s what was happening episode. It lets you stretch more storyline and at the same time establish where all the other people were and what they were doing, especially if you’re going to bring all those plot threads back.
That’s my number. Tell me what you thought of the episode in the comments on the video above, and if last week still has you wrecked, that conversation is down there too.
